More unpleasant truth

results?

In my school days (I’m 85) we had outstanding teachers, most all of them women. Back then about the best to which a female college graduate could aspire was a career in nursing or teaching. Business and the professions were pretty much closed to them. Consequently, the teaching profession got the cream of the crop. This is no longer the case.

To our everlasting credit, most all fields are now open to women, even military careers and boxing. But as a result, the teaching profession no longer attracts the brightest and the best. Today the SAT scores of college students, male and female, entering schools of education exceed only those of scholarship athletes.

Will more money alone turn things around? Today only Norway and Switzerland spend more on a per-pupil basis than we do. I think our real problem is a matter of emphasis. And I’m going to say something that will probably make my opinions more unpopular than they already are. European and Asian students not only rank ahead of ours in academic achievement, but in overall physical fitness as well. Yet their schools have no varsity athletic programs whatsoever. None.

Then are European and Asian kids just a bunch of bookish nerds? Hardly. But instead of watching “goon” sports dominated by supertall basketball and widebodied football players, foreign youths are more into participatory sports such as swimming, hiking, bicycling, mountaineering, distance running and camping, hence their better overall fitness.

About the only area in which our kids outdo their foreign counterparts is in body size. We are the world’s leader today in child (and adult!) obesity. Don’t believe this? Just park in front of any high school and observe as the students exit. And on an autumn Friday evening we might find a bunch of overfed, over-trained, over-privileged, undereducated young athletes performing before a crowd of sedentary teenagers sitting on their ample backsides, sipping high-calorie, high-caffeine drinks and munching on junk food.

No simple, cosmetic changes will work. A radical paradigm shift is required in our education and athletics policies. And I think some informed, concerned educators already realize this, but wouldn’t dare speak out.

George B. Reed Jr., who lives in Rossville, can be reached by email at reed1600@bellsouth.net.